TRUMPS BORDER WALL WILL HALT COVID-19
White House eyes Mexico, rather than states reopening too early, for coronavirus surge

Published: June 11, 2020 By Associated Press

Task force looking into travel from Mexico as source of new outbreaks

WASHINGTON — The White House is exploring the possibility that travel from Mexico may be contributing to a new wave of coronavirus infections, rather than states’ moves toward reopening their economies.

The notion was discussed at some length Thursday during a meeting of the administration’s coronavirus task force in the White House Situation Room that focused on identifying commonalities between new outbreaks. Officials also considered how to surge response capabilities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was deploying teams to Arizona and other hotspots to try to trace the outbreaks and contain them.

In addition to Arizona, other states experiencing recent spikes of infections include California, Texas and North Carolina — particularly within the Hispanic community. As a result, the task force is looking at whether those spikes may be tied to legal travel between the U.S. and Mexico, which is experiencing an ongoing severe coronavirus outbreak.

Two officials familiar with the discussions described them to The Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly describe internal conversations.

While President Donald Trump has gone to great lengths to seal U.S. borders to both legal and illegal immigrants during the outbreak, American citizens and permanent residents are still allowed entry to the U.S., as are agricultural workers.

The White House task force was also looking at other causes for a recent uptick in numbers, noting that the issues likely differ by location. Delays in test reporting and the fact that some infected people take multiple tests in order to get an all-clear to return to work are among the other theories that are being explored.

Trump has long pointed to Mexico as a source of crime and disease in the U.S., and has used the crisis to push forward some of his most hard-line immigration proposals, including blocking asylum at the border and limiting the issuance of green cards to those living outside the country.

New Trump rule would redefine who qualifies for refuge in U.S.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez,
CBS News•June 11, 202



The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a series of proposed restrictions to the country's asylum system that would constitute one of the most far-reaching attempts yet to redefine who qualifies for safe harbor on U.S. soil.

A 161-page proposal by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would establish additional barriers at all stages of the U.S. asylum process, granting officers and judges more power to deny requests for protections. It would make it more difficult, if not impossible, for foreigners to seek refuge from certain forms of persecution, including gender-based violence, gang threats and torture at the hands of "rogue" government officials.

The draft rule is slated to be formally published in the federal government's journal of regulations on Monday, after which the public will have 30 days to comment on it. The government will then work on publishing a final regulation that may or may not be altered in response to the public comments.

The impact of the rule on humanitarian programs at the southern border will be contingent on when it goes into effect because the administration has been rapidly expelling most unauthorized migrants from there since late March. If enacted, however, the proposed changes would rewrite multiple regulations and affect cases of new border crossers, as well as asylum-seekers already in the U.S.

"If this regulation is finalized and put into place, it would result in many legitimate asylum-seekers being denied the chance to seek refuge in the United States," Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, told CBS News. "There are so many provisions in here that make it impossible for even the most meritorious asylum-seekers to get through the U.S. asylum process."

Under U.S. law, foreigners can be eligible for asylum if they can prove they were persecuted — or have a well-founded fear of persecution — in their native countries based on their race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a "particular social group." Migrants, including those who cross the border without authorization, can apply for asylum, as well as other lesser forms of protection, to block their deportation.

The Trump administration has argued that Central American migrants in search of better economic opportunities have exploited these humanitarian programs to gain easy entry into the U.S. Over the past three and a half years, the administration has implemented a series of restrictions to limit access to these protections, which officials have said are plagued with loopholes.

Implementing the proposed changes, the government said in its proposal, would help officials "screen out non-meritorious claims and focus limited resources on claims much more likely to be determined to be meritorious."

The rule would require immigration judges to generally reject asylum cases of people who fear being persecuted in their home countries because of their gender or resistance to being recruited and coerced by gangs, guerrillas, terrorists and other non-state groups.

The definition of persecution would be changed to "an extreme concept of a severe level of harm." Persecution would not include, among other threats and mistreatment, "every instance of harm that arises generally out of civil, criminal, or military strife in a country," nor "any and all treatment that the United States regards as unfair, offensive, unjust, or even unlawful or unconstitutional."

Even if migrants satisfy the burden of proof to receive asylum, the rule would encourage immigration judges to deny the relief to applicants who crossed or attempted to cross the border illegally, did not file taxes, worked without authorization or used fraudulent travel documents. Unlike the lesser forms of protection from deportation, asylum is discretionary, meaning a judge can deny the protection to anyone, even people who prove they could be persecuted if returned to their home countries.

Judges would also have to consider other adverse factors, including traveling through a third country to reach the U.S., living undocumented in the country for more than a year and having criminal convictions that were vacated or expunged.

Under the proposal, protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture would no longer be available to people who were tortured, physically or mentally, by "rogue" public government officials "not acting under color of law."

Other proposed changes in the rule include making it more difficult for migrants who are barred from seeking asylum to pass interviews that determine their eligibility for relief under the United Nations anti-torture convention or "withholding of removal," the other lesser form of protection. Over the past few years, the administration has rolled out several policies to disqualify most U.S.-bound migrants from asylum, including those who traveled through a third country, like Mexico, to reach the southern border.

The definition of a "frivolous" application would also be expanded under the proposal, giving judges and asylum officers more leeway to reject "manifestly unfounded or otherwise abusive claims."

Pierce, the immigration expert, said the regulation is one of several "layers" of asylum restrictions the administration has devised to mitigate unfavorable rulings in federal courts that have hindered its agenda. She said the proposed rule could be one of the tools the administration uses to deter migrants after the public health order under which officials are expelling most border-crossers is lifted.

The administration has said the expulsion directive by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is designed to block the entry of migrants who could spread the coronavirus inside the U.S. At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, acting Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said the directive, which has been extended indefinitely, would be the "order of the day for a while," citing the lack of a coronavirus vaccine.

Pierce said Wednesday's proposal would not achieve its stated purpose of curtailing meritless asylum claims. "If they sincerely wanted to deter less-than-legitimate asylum claims, they would look at processing asylum applications more fairly and efficiently, rather than just to put up barriers at every step along the way."

Trump administration proposes sweeping asylum restrictions

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed sweeping restrictions on asylum, seeking to align a legal framework with the president's efforts to limit immigration to the United States.

The moves are only the latest in a series of measures that Trump has taken to limit asylum — this time aimed at changing complicated guidelines and procedures governing immigration courts.

The changes, outlined in 150 pages of legalese, aim to redefine how people qualify for asylum and similar forms of protection to prevent them from being persecuted or tortured if sent home.

Judges will be allowed to dismiss cases without court hearings if supporting evidence is determined to be too weak. Rules will define when a claim may be declared “frivolous” and raise the threshold for initial screenings under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

The administration will propose new definitions for some ways people qualify for asylum, specifically “political opinion” and membership in a "particular social group.”

Asylum is for people who face persecution for their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group, a loose category that may include victims of gang or domestic violence. Narrowing those ways to qualify would mean more rejected claims.

The Justice and Homeland Security departments said asylum-seekers who clear initial screenings will have claims heard by an immigration judge in “streamlined proceedings,” according to a brief press release, replacing longstanding rules in immigration law.

Since the U.S. became the world's top destination for asylum-seekers in 2017, the Trump administration has made multiple attempts to make it harder to get, asserting that the system is rife with abuse.

The Justice and Homeland Security departments said the changes would bring more efficiency to a system with an immigration court backlog of more than 1.1 million cases.

The rules will “more effectively separate baseless claims from meritorious ones,” the departments said. “This would better ensure groundless claims do not delay or divert resources from deserving claims.”

Critics swiftly condemned the measure. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel for the American Immigration Council, said it was much more far-reaching than Trump's previous attempts to curb asylum and “would lead to the denial of virtually every claim except a lucky few.”

“The proposed changes would represent the end of the asylum system as we know it,” he said.

Details are expected to be published in the Federal Register on Monday with 30 days for public comment before they take effect. Lawsuits may delay or derail the effort.

The administration effectively put asylum out of reach for many people at the Canadian and Mexican borders in March under a 1944 public health law aimed at preventing spread of the coronavirus, but that move is described as temporary. It allows the government to immediately expel people from Mexico and Central America to Mexico without claiming asylum, usually within two hours.

HE WILL DECLARE A RACE WAR IN THE NAME OF LAWN ORDER

Trump may use executive order to address policing: White House

Reuters•June 10, 2020

McEnany: Trump 'appalled' by defund police effortWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump could take policy action on race and policing via an executive order, his spokeswoman told Fox News in an interview on Wednesday as lawmakers in Congress move forward with their proposals.

"We do believe that we'll have proactive policy prescriptions, whether that means legislation or an executive order," White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said. She declined to offer specifics, saying the Republican president was still weighing various possibilities.

The potential for executive action comes as both Democrats and Republicans in Congress push forward with proposals aimed at addressing police reform amid massive protests sparked by last month's death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who died while in police custody.

House Democrats on Monday unveiled a sweeping bill that would ban chokeholds, require body cameras for federal law enforcement officers and restrict the use of lethal force, among other steps, while Senate Republicans on Tuesday said were working on their own proposal.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary for Homeland Security, declined to provide details about what action Trump is considering.

"You will see a mix of legislative proposals that we can work on a bipartisan basis, just like the president did with criminal justice reform, and executive actions he can take on his own," Cuccinelli told Fox Business Network.

Trump signed bipartisan legislation in 2018 that changed sentencing requirements and the treatment of federal prisoners.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Trump suggests executive order on police use-of-force standards

Notably, Dallas’ mayor and three top law enforcement officials, all of whom are black, weren’t on hand for the roundtable discussion at the Dallas campus of Gateway Church.

Published: June 11, 2020 Associated Press

President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion Thursday in Dallas. 

‘We’re dominating the street with compassion,’ president says

DALLAS — President Donald Trump said Thursday he would pursue an executive order to encourage police departments to meet “current professional standards for the use of force,” while slamming Democrats for broadly branding police as the problem.

He also defended his calls on governors and mayors to aggressively quell violent protests that erupted across the country after the death of George Floyd, boasting, “We’re dominating the street with compassion.”

Trump offered few details about the yet-to-be-formalized order during a discussion on race relations and policing before a friendly audience in Dallas. The call for establishing a national use-of-force standard amounted to his first concrete proposal for police reform in response to the national outcry following Floyd’s death in a violent encounter with Minneapolis police.

The president also acknowledged that law enforcement may have some “bad apples,” but he said it is unfair to broadly paint police officers as bigots.


“We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear,” Trump said. “But we’ll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots. We have to get everybody together. We have to be on the same path.”

The president said the nation also needs to bolster its efforts to confront its long-simmering racial relations problems by focusing on inequality, redoubling on his contention that solving economic issues is the fastest way to healing racial wounds.

He said his administration would aggressively pursue economic development in minority communities, confront health care disparities by investing “substantial sums” in minority-serving medical institutions, and improve school choice options.

Trump made the comments in the city that has faced its own strained relationship between police and African American community in recent years.

In 2016, a sniper opened fire on police during a protest in downtown Dallas. The Army veteran fatally shot four Dallas police officers and one transit officer before authorities killed him using a robot-delivered bomb.

Last year, an officer was sentenced to a decade in prison for murder in the off-duty shooting of her neighbor. Amber Guyger killed Botham Jean in his home in September 2018. She later testified that after a long shift she mistook his apartment for her own and Jean, a 28-year-old accountant, for a burglar.

Notably, Dallas’ mayor and three top law enforcement officials, all of whom are black, weren’t on hand for the roundtable discussion at the Dallas campus of Gateway Church.

Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall, Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot did not receive invitations to the event, according to their offices. Mayor Eric Johnson was invited but did not attend because of prior commitments, according to an aide.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters ahead of Trump’s trip noted other law enforcement officials were in attendance but did not directly respond to a question about why the three officials weren’t invited.

Trump filled the roundtable with police union officials and allies from the African American community, including a member of Black Voices for Trump — many who spoke glowingly about the president.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have unveiled sweeping police reform legislation, including provisions to ban choke holds and limit legal protections for police. Congressional Republicans say they are also open to some reforms, including a national registry of use-of-force incidents so police officers cannot transfer between departments without public awareness of their records.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior adviser Jared Kushner have been discussing possible packages with GOP lawmakers, but it’s unclear what the president himself would be willing to accept.

Trump, for his part, lashed at some in the Democratic party who have called for “defunding the police,” a broad call to reframe thinking about how communities should approach public safety.

“”Unfortunately there’s some trying to stoke division and to push an extreme agenda, which we won’t go for, that will produce only more poverty, more crime, more suffering,” Trump said. “This includes radical efforts to defund, dismantle and disband the police. They want to get rid of the police.”

Glenn Heights, Texas, Police Chief Vernell Dooley urged Trump to increase resources to provide police with more training. “We need training,” Dooley said. “This is not the time to defund police departments.”

Activists say it isn’t about eliminating police departments or stripping agencies of all their money. They say it is time for the country to address systemic problems in policing in America and spend more on other things communities across the U.S. need, like housing and education.

Trump has publicly expressed sympathy for the family of Floyd and suggested that Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin, who prosecutors say pressed his knee down on Floyd’s neck for several minutes, must have “snapped.”

But Trump has also underscored that he believes that 99% of police are “great, great people.” Top advisers, including Attorney General William Barr, have rejected the notion that systemic racial bias is a problem in American law enforcement.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, dismissed Trump’s Dallas visit in advance as a “photo op” and charged that the president has “run away from a meaningful conversation on systemic racism and police brutality.”

Trump, whose campaign effort has been largely sidelined by the coronavirus, was also holding a high-dollar fundraiser during his visit to Dallas. The intimate event for about 25 supporters was expected to raise $10 million to be split between his campaign, the Republican National Committee and 22 state parties, according to a GOP official.

—-

Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

POLICE VIOLENCE 
AGAINST NON WHITE MINORITIES
IS NOT A CASE OF A ROTTEN APPLE
BUT A ROTTEN SYSTEM 

'I can't breathe,' Oklahoma man tells police before dying. 'I don't care,' officer responds.

Tim Stelloh,  NBC News•June 10, 2020


Newly released body camera footage from an arrest in Oklahoma City last year shows a suspect saying “I can’t breathe” before he died at a hospital.

In the May 20, 2019 footage, released this week by the Oklahoma City Police Department, three officers are seen restraining the man, Derrick Scott, 42, who can be heard asking repeatedly for his medicine and saying that he can’t breathe.

“I don’t care,” one of the officers, Jarred Tipton, can be heard replying at one point. “You can breathe just fine,” another officer can be heard saying a couple of minutes later.

Scott, who appears unresponsive several minutes into the footage, was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. An autopsy obtained by NBC News lists his cause of death as a collapsed lung.

Something Went Wrong

The incident began after officers were called to an area south of downtown Oklahoma City shortly before 2 p.m. after someone reported that a black man was arguing with people and brandishing a gun, Oklahoma City police Capt. Larry Withrow said in a statement.

The footage shows Scott running from officers after Tipton asks if he has any weapons. After the police tackle and restrain him, one of the officers can be seen removing a handgun from Scott’s pocket.

Later, an officer tries to administer CPR before paramedics arrive.

The autopsy said the police response did not result in “fatal trauma” and listed several other “significant” factors that contributed to his death, including physical restraint, recent methamphetamine use, asthma, emphysema and heart disease.

His manner of death was listed as “undetermined.”

Winthrow said an investigation into the incident by the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office cleared the three officers — Tipton, Ashley Copeland and Sgt. Jennifer Titus — of misconduct.

Winthrow attributed Tipton’s comments to the “heat of a conflict.”

“Certainly that may be something an officer says,” he told NBC affiliate KFOR. “Just understand — the officers are fighting with someone at that point.”

But local activists and Scott’s relatives have challenged authorities. Scott’s uncle, Ronald Scott, told KFOR that he was “bothered by how they treated his life.”

“There is a lack of a focus on humanity and civility,” added Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, of Black Lives Matter OKC. Authorities released the footage after the group included it in a list of demands to city leaders after protests over the death of George Floyd earlier this month.

Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. In a video of the incident, Floyd could be heard saying, “I can’t breathe” — a phrase that became a protest chant after a bystander’s cell phone video captured the 2014 chokehold death of a Staten Island, N.Y. man, Eric Garner, who also said, "I can't breathe."

TV COPS UNION DENOUNCES POLICE UNIONS

SAG-AFTRA Leaders Call On Police Unions To Change “Or Lose All Support”

David Robb
Deadline June 11, 2020


Click here to read the full article.

SAG-AFTRA leaders today called upon police unions to change with the times “or lose all support from their fellow labor organizations and the public at large.”

In a joint statement, SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and national executive director David White said: “We support convening a meeting of affiliate unions, including law enforcement unions, to discuss police reforms and necessary systemic change. We support working directly with affiliated police unions to achieve meaningful changes to the law enforcement culture of discrimination and brutality.”
Many critics believe that police union rules often prevent bad cops from being fired, and Carteris, who is a vice president of the AFL-CIO, said she presented several recommendations to its committees last week They include an expression of support for Black Lives Matter; a call for “all affiliate members of the AFL-CIO to explicitly and loudly demand that police unions disavow those officers who target black people”; and convening “all parts of the labor movement, including non-affiliated unions, to issue a public statement condemning racial injustice.”

Carteris and White stopped short of joining the WGA East in calling for the AFL-CIO to disaffiliate with the International Union of Police Associations, a labor organization that represents more than 100,000 police officers around the country.

WGA East Calls On AFL-CIO To Give Police Union The Boot

In their statement, Carteris and White also urged police unions to “dismantle the structures they have erected that have been used to protect officers who engage in racially targeted violence, racial profiling, and other racist and unlawful conduct towards Black and other citizens of this country. This includes all steps necessary to change collective bargaining agreement provisions, and other practices and protocols that stand in the way of police departments being strong defenders of all people as opposed to tools of oppression against Black people.”

They also noted that “As a labor union representing members and staff who have been personally and directly affected by police violence, we recognize the simplicity and simultaneous complexity of the challenges facing police unions at this time in our nation’s history.”
Here is the full statement from SAG-AFTRA’s Carteris and White:

As a labor union representing members and staff who have been personally and directly affected by police violence, we recognize the simplicity and simultaneous complexity of the challenges facing police unions at this time in our nation’s history. Accordingly, we assert the following:

Black Lives Matter.

We reject and denounce police brutality and the corrupt systems that for decades supported a culture of racism, injustice and brutality. We stand in solidarity with all who have experienced injustice and violence at the hands of law enforcement. Police organizations must change.

Real change is more than just talk. It is action. We call for real change and we are willing to work for it and fight for it.

Police Unions Must Confront Those Structures that Facilitate Racist, Unlawful Misconduct.

Last week, President Carteris, who is also a vice president of the AFL-CIO, presented several recommendations to its committees.

President Carteris’ recommendations were: 1) express public support for Black Lives Matter, 2) call upon all affiliate members of the AFL-CIO to explicitly and loudly demand that police unions disavow those officers who target Black people, and 3) bring together all parts of the labor movement, including non-affiliated unions, to issue a public statement condemning racial injustice.

To these recommendations we now add a fourth: police unions must dismantle the structures they have erected that have been used to protect officers who engage in racially targeted violence, racial profiling, and other racist and unlawful conduct towards Black and other citizens of this country. This includes all steps necessary to change collective bargaining agreement provisions, and other practices and protocols that stand in the way of police departments being strong defenders of all people as opposed to tools of oppression against Black people.

We Support Policing with Integrity. These Concepts are Not Inconsistent.

e recognize those brothers and sisters who are police officers and who work lawfully and tirelessly to serve us and protect us from harm. We do not believe that this demand for change in unions is inconsistent with celebrating police officers who do their work with integrity. We know from experience that unions do, and must, confront their problems, learn from their mistakes and evolve into better organizations and representatives of working people.

We believe that we have an opportunity to make tomorrow better than today. We call upon police unions to seize this opportunity and reform their culture and practice. Black lives matter and our police must support this truth in all ways.

Tomorrow Can Be Better Than Today. We are Prepared to Participate.

We support convening a meeting of affiliate unions, including law enforcement unions, to discuss police reforms and necessary systemic change. We support working directly with affiliated police unions to achieve meaningful changes to the law enforcement culture of discrimination and brutality.

We call on police unions to seize this opportunity. They must rise to the occasion or lose all support from their fellow labor organizations and the public at large.

TRUMPF TWEETS

FROM HUFFPOST
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/donald-trump-joe-biden-campaign-slogan-160649224.html


White House says Trump was merely 'raising questions' with baseless claim about Buffalo protester
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-white-house-defends-buffalo-tweet-questions-170122511.html

The president was determined to make sure he had the last word on this incredibly thorny issue, so much so in fact that reporters attending the latest White House briefing were given a print out of his tweets verbatim…

Exclusive: Most Americans, including Republicans, support sweeping Democratic police reform proposals - Reuters/Ipsos pollChris Kahn,
Reuters•June 11, 2020

President Trump slams calls to defund police as Democrats unveil police reform legislation 

President Trump says he's "appalled" by calls to defund police departments in the wake of intense protests across the country, and his campaign accused former Vice President Joe Biden of supporting the movement. Biden later told CBS News he does not support defunding police. Meanwhile, Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation aimed at combating police misconduct. Ben Tracy reports.

By Chris Kahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Most Americans, including a majority of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, support sweeping law enforcement reforms such as a ban on chokeholds and racial profiling after the latest death of an African American while in police custody, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday.

The national survey on June 9-10, shows the public broadly on the side of Democratic lawmakers, who proposed a series of changes to police departments (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-congress/u-s-democrats-pledge-transformative-change-with-police-reform-bill-idUSKBN23F2OI) in the United States as protesters gathered nationwide to condemn the death of George Floyd and racism.

The White House and Republican lawmakers are preparing their own plans for changes in policing, though they are expected to fall short of the deep reforms being sought by Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden, their party's presumptive presidential nominee in the Nov. 3 election to challenge Trump.

The poll 

(https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ELECTION/qmypmorxgpr/Topline%20Reuters%20George%20Floyd%20Protests%20%20Police%20Reform%2006%2010%202020.pdf) 

conducted online of 1,113 U.S. adults showed bipartisan support for many of the Democrats' proposals.

For example, 82% of Americans want to ban police from using chokeholds, 83% want to ban racial profiling, and 92% want federal police to be required to wear body cameras.

It also found that 89% of Americans want to require police to give the people they stop their name, badge number and reason for the stop, and 91% support allowing independent investigations of police departments that show patterns of misconduct.

Seventy-five percent of Americans want to support "allowing victims of police misconduct to sue police departments for damages."

Trump, who has been trying to win back suburban voters by positioning himself as a "law-and-order" president, called on states to crack down on the protests. Trump had previously said that he could use military forces if states did not quell protests, which have been mostly peaceful apart from some arson and looting and clashes with officers.
According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, rank-and-file Republicans appear to be mostly supportive of the proposals Democratic lawmakers in Congress unveiled on June 8. [nL1N2DL0J4] The legislation followed Floyd's May 25 death in Minneapolis, where a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

According to the poll, six out 10 Republicans supported a provision that would allow “victims of police misconduct to sue police departments for damages.”

Seven in 10 Republicans support bans on racial profiling and chokeholds. Nine in 10 Republicans agree that police should wear body cameras and the same proportion agreed that law enforcement agencies should be open to independent investigations.

Trump also has tried to tie Democrats to calls for "defunding the police" by activists on the left. The term refers to eliminating or cutting spending on police departments, often the largest expense for municipalities, and using the funds for education, social welfare, housing and other community needs.

Trump and Biden have both said they oppose "defunding" police departments.THEY ARE BOTH OUT OF TOUCH

Yet the Reuters/Ipsos poll found that support varies based on how it is defined.

For example, 39% of respondents supported proposals “to completely dismantle police departments and give more financial support to address homelessness, mental health, and domestic violence.”

But 76% said they supported moving “some money currently going to police budgets into better officer training, local programs for homelessness, mental health assistance, and domestic violence.”

Minneapolis is considering phasing out its police department but the city council has not formally discussed how it would do so, and what it would replace the department with.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll gathered responses online, in English, across the United States. It gathered responses from 1,113 adults, including 495 Democrats and 417 Republicans and has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

(Reporting by Chris Kahn, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Grant McCool)

More Americans Want Democrats to Control Congress, WSJ/NBC Poll Finds

New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Support for Black Lives Matter doubles as most Americans reject Trump's protest response

Andrew Romano
West Coast Correspondent,
Yahoo News•June 11, 2020

In what may represent one of the more rapid shifts in racial attitudes in recent U.S. history, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that a broad majority of Americans now believe that both the police and society as a whole are beset by systemic racism — a messaging victory for the Black Lives Matter movement and the related protests that have roiled the nation since George Floyd died last month under the knee of a Minneapolis cop.

Likewise, most Americans reject President Trump’s claim that “law and order” can solve the problem, even as they worry that activists’ preferred approach of “defunding” the police goes too far.

The survey, conducted June 9 and 10, found that the mass protests have triggered a sea change in perceptions of race in America. In 2016, just a quarter of Americans (27 percent) told YouGov that they approved of Black Lives Matter; today, 57 percent say they have a favorable view of the movement.

 Poll finds support for Black Lives Matter has doubled among Americans 


A similar majority (56 percent) say they have become more concerned about racial injustice in the U.S. since the protests began just two weeks ago.

As a result, 60 percent of Americans now say that “racism is built into American society” and that “the assumption of white superiority pervades schools, business, housing and government.” An identical number say the police have a problem with systemic racism; even more (63 percent) say America has a problem with it. A majority (53 percent) say “many” Americans are racist, while an additional 8 percent describe “most” Americans that way. Sixty-nine percent say race was a factor in Floyd’s killing; 54 percent say it was a “major” factor. And 60 percent say the deaths of African-Americans during encounters with the police are signs of a broader problem rather than isolated incidents, with 63 percent saying police officers don’t treat black and white people equally.

Back in 2013, when Black Lives Matter began, most Americans tended to disagree with such views.

The public has even changed its mind, seemingly overnight, about one of the most contentious cultural issues of the last few years: whether NFL players such as former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick should protest racism and police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. Asked in 2016, just 28 percent of Americans considered Kaepernick’s conduct “appropriate”; asked again in 2018, just 35 percent said the same. Now, for the first time, a majority of Americans (52 percent) agree that it’s “OK for NFL players to kneel during the national anthem to protest police killings of African-Americans” — while only 36 percent say it’s not.

As racial attitudes evolve, Trump appears to be increasingly out of step. A staggering three-quarters of Americans — including 66 percent of Republicans — say the country is out of control. Yet only 36 percent of Americans agree with Trump that “law and order” would help matters; the remainder (64 percent) prefer an approach that involves “bringing people together.” (As of Thursday morning, Trump has “LAW & ORDER!” pinned to the top of his Twitter profile.)

President Trump during a meeting with conservative black supporters at the White House on Wednesday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

The problem for the president is that he receives dismal marks on uniting the country. Asked whether they agree or disagree with the recent criticism from Gen. Jim Mattis, Trump’s former defense secretary, that the president “does not try to unify the American people” but instead “tries to divide us,” 60 percent concur with Mattis. Only 15 percent say Trump’s response to the protests has been helpful. Just 31 percent say it was appropriate for the Trump administration to forcibly remove protesters adjacent to the White House. A full 55 percent say the protesters were cleared so Trump could pose with a Bible in front of nearby St. John’s Church — not so security forces could widen the safety perimeter to protect federal buildings, as the administration claimed. The same number disapprove of Trump’s recent tweet baselessly accusing a 75-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., protester who was shoved to the ground and bloodied by police of being an “ANTIFA provocateur.” And in the previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll, conducted May 29 and 30, a minority of white people (43 percent to 46 percent) said yes when asked if Trump is a racist. Today, however, a plurality of white people (46 percent to 39 percent) say he is — a net shift of 10 percentage points in as many days.

Twice as many Americans — 54 percent to 26 percent — think former President Barack Obama would have handled the Floyd protests better than Trump. On the same question, Trump trails presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 10 points (42 percent to 32 percent); on the question of who would do a better job handling race relations overall, Trump trails Biden by 17 (44 percent to 27 percent). A full 49 percent of Americans say they now plan to vote for Biden in November. Just 40 percent say they plan to vote for Trump.

Which isn’t to say Americans agree with the protesters about everything. In late May, a majority (51 percent) described the Floyd protests as “mostly violent riots”; only 10 percent thought they were “mostly peaceful.” Now those numbers have largely flipped, with 43 percent saying the protests have been mostly peaceful and 21 percent saying they’ve been mostly violent. Yet by a 13-point margin — 43 percent to 30 percent — the public still thinks the protesters have been more violent than the police during the last two weeks, with a majority saying that “most” (12 percent) or “many” protesters (42 percent) have broken the law, while a minority says that most (11 percent) or many (34 percent) police officers have responded to peaceful protests with violence.


Americans disapprove of the police’s response to the protests, with a majority rating it either fair (31 percent) or poor (25 percent). But they also remain skeptical of protesters’ demands. Only 25 percent favor “cutting funding for police departments” — a 9-point increase from last month’s poll, but still far less than the 53 percent who oppose cuts. A full 59 percent of Americans agree that “police departments have a problem with race, but the problem can be fixed by reforming the existing system,” with most of the specific reforms under consideration in Congress receiving widespread support. Just 24 percent say that “police reform hasn’t worked” and that “we need to defund police and reinvent our approach to public safety.” Meanwhile, 64 percent of Americans insist that “we need more cops on the street,” not fewer; black Americans are evenly divided (50 percent to 50 percent) on the issue. When the question about defunding is rephrased as “spending less money on police” in order to invest “more money [in] a community’s education, housing and health care programs,” a plurality (40 percent) are still opposed.

Americans seem more inclined to favor (by a 49 percent to 30 percent margin) “gradually redirecting police funding toward increasing the number of social workers, drug counselors and mental health experts responsible for responding to non-violent emergencies” — a key tenet of most defunding proposals. Yet while a majority of Americans describe the Minneapolis City Council’s recent pledge to dismantle the city’s police department and replace it with a new system of public safety as either a “very good” (19 percent) or a “somewhat good idea” (32 percent), a substantial plurality (45 percent) say they are opposed to their own city council doing the same thing.

There are still limits, in other words, to how much Americans say they are willing to sacrifice to address systemic racism — and how much responsibility they are willing to take. For instance, a plurality (46 percent to 33 percent) say that race relations in the U.S are “generally bad” rather than “generally good.” Yet the numbers are radically reversed — 63 percent good vs. 17 percent bad — when Americans are asked to assess race relations in their own community. By the same token, just 4 percent of Americans say yes when asked if they themselves are “racist.” Eighty-four percent say no. Only 20 percent admit to having any “racial biases” at all.

Cover photo thumbnail: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

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