Tag Archives: Race and ethnicity

US

Door of No Return: Yellen visits onetime slave-trading post

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GOREE ISLAND, Senegal (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen paid a solemn visit Saturday to the salmon-colored house on an island off Senegal that is one of the most recognized symbols of the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade that trapped tens of millions of Africans in bondage for generations.

Yellen, in Senegal as part of a 10-day trip aimed at rebuilding economic relationships between the U.S. and Africa, stood in the Gorée Island building known as the House of Slaves and peered out of the “Door of No Return,” from which enslaved people were shipped across the Atlantic.

She was guided on a tour through various corridors and tight quarters in the house, shaking her head in disgust at what she was told about the economics of how slaves were valued.

“Gorée and the trans-Atlantic slave trade are not just a part of African history. They are a part of American history as well,” Yellen said later in brief remarks during her visit.

“We know that the tragedy did not stop with the generation of humans taken from here,” she added. “Even after slavery was abolished, Black Americans — many of whom can trace their descendance through ports like this across Africa — were denied the rights and freedoms promised to them under our Constitution.”

Later, in an interview with The Associated Press, Yellen said that while promoting diversity and racial equality is a key goal, “the administration has not embraced reparations as part of the answer.”

The economic benefits that major slave-trading nations, including the United States, reaped for hundreds of years on the backs of unpaid labor could amount to tens of trillions of dollars, according to research on the commerce.

And in the U.S., African slaves and their children contributed to the building of the nation’s most storied institutions, including the White House and Capitol, according to the White House Historical Association.

Yellen acknowledged the ongoing ramifications of that brutal past in her public remarks.

“In both Africa and the United States, even as we have made tremendous strides, we are still living with the brutal consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade,” she said.

In a guest book at the house, she wrote that it served as “an important reminder that the histories of Africa and America are intimately connected. While I am pained by its past, I am also heartened by the vibrant community I have seen here. I take from this place the importance of redoubling our commitment to fight for our shared principles and values of freedom and human rights wherever they are threatened — in Africa, in the United States, and around the world.”

Yellen’s trip to the island is one that many dignitaries have made, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. Today, Gorée Island is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Yellen’s stop there during a trip meant to revitalize U.S.-African economic relations is one that evoked the massive costs of the slave trade. There has been a resurgence in interest in determining the true cost of slavery on the generations impacted.

The House Financial Services Committee in recent years has studied how U.S. banks and insurance companies profited from the practice of slavery before it was outlawed in 1865. There have also been hearings on the study and development of reparations proposals in the United States.

In the AP interview, Yellen said the administration was “working in many ways in communities of color and low-income communities to try to bring more capital to advance lending and other things,” she said. “It’s a critically important goal.”

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US

Supreme Court taking up clash of religion and gay rights

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is hearing the case Monday of a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples, a dispute that’s the latest clash of religion and gay rights to land at the highest court.

The designer and her supporters say that ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their faith. Her opponents, meanwhile, say that if she wins, a range of businesses will be able to discriminate, refusing to serve Black customers, Jewish or Muslim people, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants, among others.

The case comes at a time when the court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives and following a series of cases in which the justices have sided with religious plaintiffs. It also comes as, across the street from the court, lawmakers in Congress are finalizing a landmark bill protecting same-sex marriage.

The bill, which also protects interracial marriage, steadily gained momentum following the high court’s decision earlier this year to end constitutional protections for abortion. That decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade case prompted questions about whether the court — now that it is more conservative — might also overturn its 2015 decision declaring a nationwide right to same-sex marriage. Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly said that decision should also be reconsidered.

The case being argued before the high court Monday involves Lorie Smith, a graphic artist and website designer in Colorado who wants to begin offering wedding websites. Smith says her Christian faith prevents her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages. But that could get her in trouble with state law. Colorado, like most other states, has what’s called a public accommodation law that says if Smith offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other things.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court heard a different challenge involving Colorado’s law and a baker, Jack Phillips, who objected to designing a wedding cake for a gay couple. That case ended with a limited decision, however, and set up a return of the issue to the high court. Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, is now representing Smith.

Like Phillips, Smith says her objection is not to working with gay people. She says she’d work with a gay client who needed help with graphics for an animal rescue shelter, for example, or to promote an organization serving children with disabilities. But she objects to creating messages supporting same-sex marriage, she says, just as she won’t take jobs that would require her to create content promoting atheism or gambling or supporting abortion.

Smith says Colorado’s law violates her free speech rights. Her opponents, including the Biden administration and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, disagree.

Twenty mostly liberal states, including California and New York, are supporting Colorado while another 20 mostly Republican states, including Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee, are supporting Smith.

The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

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World

Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler

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Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

“My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.

But in the West, this symbol is often equated to Adolf Hitler’s hakenkreuz or the hooked cross – a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and vandals have continued to use Hitler’s symbol to stoke fear and hate.

Over the past decade, as the Asian diaspora has grown in North America, the call to reclaim the swastika as a sacred symbol has become louder. These minority faith communities are being joined by Native American elders whose ancestors have long used the symbol as part of healing rituals.

Deo believes she and people of other faiths should not have to sacrifice or apologize for a sacred symbol simply because it is often conflated with its tainted version.

“To me, that’s intolerable,” she said.

Yet to others, the idea that the swastika could be redeemed is unthinkable.

Holocaust survivors in particular could be re-traumatized when they see the symbol, said Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North America’s Center on Holocaust Survivor Care.

“One of the hallmarks of trauma is that it shatters a person’s sense of safety,” said Wernick, whose grandparents met at a displaced persons’ camp in Austria after World War II. “The swastika was a representation of the concept that stood for the annihilation of an entire people.”

For her grandparents and the elderly survivors she serves, Wernick said, the symbol is the physical representation of the horrors they experienced.

“I recognize the swastika as a symbol of hate.”

New York-based Steven Heller, a design historian and author of “Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?”, said the swastika is “a charged symbol for so many whose loved ones were criminally and brutally murdered.” Heller’s great-grandfather perished during the Holocaust.

“A rose by any other name is a rose,” he said. “In the end it’s how a symbol affects you visually and emotionally. For many, it creates a visceral impact and that’s a fact.”

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The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being.” It has been used in prayers of the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Buddhism, the symbol is known as “manji” and signifies the Buddha’s footsteps. It is used to mark the location of Buddhist temples. In China it’s called Wàn, and denotes the universe or the manifestation and creativity of God. The swastika is carved into the Jains’ emblem representing the four types of birth an embodied soul might attain until it is eventually liberated from the cycle of birth and death. In the Zoroastrian faith, it represents the four elements – water, fire, air and earth.

In India, the ubiquitous symbol can be seen on thresholds, drawn with vermillion and turmeric, and displayed on shop doors, vehicles, food packaging and at festivals or special occasions. Elsewhere, it has been found in the Roman catacombs, ruins in Greece and Iran, and in Ethiopian and Spanish churches.

The swastika also was a Native American symbol used by many southwestern tribes, particularly the Navajo and Hopi. To the Navajo, it represented a whirling log, a sacred image used in healing rituals and sand paintings. Swastika motifs can be found in items carbon-dated to 15,000 years ago on display at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine as well as on artifacts recovered from the ruins of the ancient Indus Valley civilizations that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BC.

The symbol was revived during the 19th century excavations in the ancient city of Troy by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who connected it to a shared Aryan culture across Europe and Asia. Historians believe it is this notion that made the symbol appealing to nationalist groups in Germany including the Nazi Party, which adopted it in 1920.

In North America, in the early 20th century, swastikas made their way into ceramic tiles, architectural features, military insignia, team logos, government buildings and marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola issued a swastika pendant. Carlsberg beer bottles came etched with swastikas. The Boy Scouts handed out badges with the symbol until 1940.

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The Rev. T.K. Nakagaki said he was shocked when he first heard the swastika referred to as a “universal symbol of evil” at an interfaith conference. The New York-based Buddhist priest, who was ordained in the 750-year-old Jodoshinshu tradition of Japanese Buddhism, says when he hears the word “swastika” or “manji,” he thinks of a Buddhist temple because that is what it represents in Japan where he grew up.

“You cannot call it a symbol of evil or (deny) other facts that have existed for hundreds of years, just because of Hitler,” he said.

In his 2018 book titled “The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross: Rescuing a Symbol of Peace from the Forces of Hate,” Nakagaki posits that Hitler referred to the symbol as the hooked cross or hakenkreuz. Nakagaki’s research also shows the symbol was called the hakenkreuz in U.S. newspapers until the early 1930s, when the word swastika replaced it.

Nakagaki believes more dialogue is needed even though it will be uncomfortable.

“This is peace work, too,” he said.

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The Coalition of Hindus of North America is one of several faith groups leading the effort to differentiate the swastika from the hakenkreuz. They supported a new California law that criminalizes the public display of the hakenkreuz — making an exception for the sacred swastika.

Pushpita Prasad, a spokesperson for the Hindu group, called it a victory, but said the legislation unfortunately labels both Hitler’s symbol and the sacred one as swastikas.

This is “not just an esoteric battle,” Prasad said, but an issue with real-life consequences for immigrant communities, whose members have resorted to self-censoring.

Vikas Jain, a Cleveland physician, said he and his wife hid images containing the symbol when their children’s friends visited because “they wouldn’t know the difference.” Jain says he stands in solidarity with the Jewish community, but is sad that he cannot freely practice his Jain faith “because of this lack of understanding.”

He noted that the global Jain emblem has a swastika in it, but the U.S. Jain community deliberately removed it from its seal. Jain wishes people would differentiate between their symbol of peace and Hitler’s swastika just as they do with the hateful burning cross symbol and Christianity’s sacred crucifix.

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Before World War II, the name “Swastika” was so popular in North America it was used to mark numerous locations. Swastika Park, a housing subdivision in Miami, was created in 1917, and still has that name. In 2020, the hamlet of Swastika, nestled in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, decided to keep its name after town councilors determined that it predated WWII and referred to the prosperity symbol.

Swastika Acres, the name of a Denver housing subdivision, can be traced to the Denver Swastika Land Company. It was founded in 1908, and changed its name to Old Cherry Hills in 2019 after a unanimous city council vote. In September, the town council in Puslinch, Ontario, voted to change the name of the street Swastika Trail to Holly Trail.

Next month, the Oregon Geographic Names Board, which supervises the naming of geographic features within the state, is set to vote to rename Swastika Mountain, a 4,197-foot butte in the Umpqua National Forest. Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of the Oregon Historical Society, said although its name can only be found on a map, it made news in January when two stranded hikers were rescued from the mountain.

“A Eugene resident saw that news report and asked why on earth was this mountain called that in this day and age,” said Tymchuk. He said the mountain got its name in the 1900s from a neighboring ranch whose owner branded his cattle with the swastika.

Tymchuk said the names board is set to rename Mount Swastika as Mount Halo after Chief Halito, who led the Yoncalla Kalapuya tribe in the 1800s.

“Most people we’ve heard from associate it with Nazism,” Tymchuk said.

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For the Navajo people, the symbol, shaped like a swirl, represents the universe and life, said Patricia Anne Davis, an elder of the Choctaw and Dineh nations.

“It was a spiritual, esoteric symbol that was woven into the Navajo rugs, until Hitler took something good and beautiful and made it twisted,” she said.

In the early 20th century, traders encouraged Native artists to use it on their crafts; it appeared often on silver work, textiles and pottery. But after it became a Nazi symbol, representatives from the Hopi, Navajo, Apache and Tohono O’odham tribes signed a proclamation in 1940 banning its use.

Davis views the original symbol that was used by many Indigenous people as one of peace, healing and goodness.

“I understand the wounds and trauma that Jewish people experience when they see that symbol,” she said. “All I can do is affirm its true meaning — the one that never changed across cultures, languages and history. It’s time to restore the authentic meaning of that symbol.”

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Like Nakagaki, Jeff Kelman, a New Hampshire-based Holocaust historian, believes the hakenkreuz and swastika were distinct. Kelman who takes this message to Jewish communities, is optimistic about the symbol’s redemption because he sees his message resonating with many in his community, including Holocaust survivors.

“When they learn an Indian girl could be named Swastika and she could be harassed in school, they understand how they should see these as two separate symbols,” he said. “No one in the Jewish community wants to see Hitler’s legacy continue to harm people.”

Greta Elbogen, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor whose grandmother and cousins were killed at Auschwitz, says she was surprised to learn about the symbol’s sacred past. Elbogen was born in 1938 when the Nazis forcibly annexed Austria. She went into hiding with relatives in Hungary, immigrated to the U.S. in 1956 and became a social worker.

This new knowledge about the swastika, Elbogen said, feels liberating; she no longer fears a symbol that was used to terrorize.

“Hearing that the swastika is beautiful and sacred to so many people is a blessing,” she said. “It’s time to let go of the past and look to the future.”

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For many, the swastika evokes a visceral reaction unlike any other, said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism who for the past 22 years has maintained the group’s hate symbols database.

“The only symbol that would even come close to the swastika is the symbol of a hooded Klansman,” he said.

The ADL explains the sanctity of the swastika in many faiths and cultures, and there are other lesser-known religious symbols that must be similarly contextualized, Pitcavage said. One is the Celtic cross – a traditional Christian symbol used for religious purposes and to symbolize Irish pride – which is used by a number of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

Similarly, Thor’s hammer is an important symbol for those who follow neo-Norse religions such as Asatru. But white supremacists have adopted it as well, often creating racist versions of the hammer by incorporating hate symbols such as Hitler’s hakenkreuz.

“In the case of the swastika, Hitler polluted a symbol that was used innocuously in a variety of contexts,” Pitcavage said. “Because that meaning has become so entrenched in the West, while I believe it is possible to create some awareness, I don’t think that its association with the Nazis can be completely eliminated.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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US

Trump faulted for dinner with white nationalist, rapper Ye

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NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is renewing attention to his long history of turning a blind eye to bigotry after dining with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West just days into his third campaign for the White House.

Trump had dinner Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago club with West, who is now known as Ye, as well as Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist who has used his online platform to spew antisemitic and white nationalist rhetoric.

Ye, who says he, too, is running for president in 2024, has made his own series of antisemitic comments in recent weeks, leading to his suspension from social media platforms, his talent agency dropping him and companies like Adidas cutting ties with him. The sportswear manufacturer has also launched an investigation into his conduct.

In a statement from the White House, spokesman Andrew Bates said: “Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America — including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned.”

Trump, in a series of statements Friday, said he had “never met and knew nothing about” Fuentes before he arrived with Ye at his club. But Trump also did not acknowledge Fuentes’ long history of racist and antisemitic remarks, nor did he denounce either man’s defamatory statements.

Trump wrote of Ye on his social media platform that “we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’” He added, “Why wouldn’t I agree to meet?”

The former president has a long history of failing to unequivocally condemn hate speech. During his 2016 campaign, Trump waffled when asked to denounce the KKK after he was endorsed by the group’s former leader, saying in a televised interview that he didn’t “know anything about David Duke.” In 2017, in the aftermath of the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump was widely criticized for saying there was “blame on both sides” for the violence. And his rallies frequently feature inflammatory rhetoric from figures like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who spoke earlier this year at a far-right conference organized by Fuentes.

The latest episode, coming just one week after Trump launched his third run for the Republican nomination, also underscored how loosely controlled access to the former president remained, particularly without a traditional campaign operation in place.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club came under intense scrutiny amid revelations that Trump was storing hundreds of documents with classified markings there — sparking a federal investigation. But the club — and the people it gave access to Trump — had long been a source of consternation among former White House aides.

Mar-a-Lago is not only Trump’s home, but also a private club and event space. Paid members and their guests dine alongside him and often mingle with him; members of the public can book weddings, fundraisers and other events, and Trump often drops by.

Ye first shared details of the dinner in a video he posted to his Twitter account Thursday. Ye said he had traveled to Florida to ask Trump to be his 2024 running mate, and that the meeting had grown heated, with Trump “perturbed” by his request and Ye angered by Trump’s criticism of his estranged wife, Kim Kardashian.

“When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was gonna lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history, telling Ye that I’m going to lose?” Ye asked in the video. “You’re talking to Ye!”

Ye also said Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes,” whom he described as “actually a loyalist” and said he’d asked Trump, “Why when you had the chance did you not free the January 6th-ers?” referring to the defendants who were alleged to have participated in the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump released a series of statements Friday trying to explain the circumstances of the meeting.

“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about,” Trump said in his first statement released by his campaign.

Not long after, Trump took to his social media network to say that Ye and “three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about” had “unexpectedly showed up” at his club.

“We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport,” he wrote.

Hours later he again posted, saying he had told Ye that he “should definitely not run for President,” and that “any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.”

“Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’” he added. “Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”

Fuentes, meanwhile, said after the trip that, while he couldn’t rule out that Trump had heard of him, “I don’t think he knew that I was me at the dinner.”

“I didn’t mean for my statements and my whole background to sort of become a public relations problem for the president,” he added on his show.

The meeting drew immediate criticism from Trump critics as well as some supporters, including David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel.

“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this. Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable,” Friedman wrote in a tweet. “I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.”

On Saturday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a potential 2024 rival, also denounced antisemitism, without directly referencing the dinner or the president under whom he served.

“Anti-Semitism is a cancer,” Pompeo wrote, adding: “We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry.”

Biden, asked about the Trump dinner meeting while vacationing in Nantucket, Massachusetts, replied, “You don’t want to hear what I think.”

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US

Kelly win in Arizona puts Dems 1 seat from Senate control

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PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won his bid for reelection Friday in the crucial swing state of Arizona, defeating Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters to put his party one victory away from clinching control of the chamber for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

With Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Democrats can retain control of the Senate by winning either the Nevada race, which remains too early to call, or next month’s runoff in Georgia. Republicans now must win both those races to take the majority.

The Arizona race is one of a handful of contests that Republicans targeted in their bid to take control of the 50-50 Senate. It was a test of the inroads that Kelly and other Democrats have made in a state once reliably dominated by the GOP. Kelly’s victory suggests Democratic success in Arizona was not an aberration during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The closely watched race for governor between Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republican Kari Lake was too early to call Friday night. In the secretary of state’s race, Democrat Adrian Fontes defeated Republican Mark Finchem, a top 2020 election denier.

Kelly, a former NASA astronaut who’s flown in space four times, is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who inspired the nation with her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head during an assassination attempt in 2011 that killed six people and injured 13. Kelly and Giffords went on to co-found a gun safety advocacy group.

Kelly and Giffords were at an Elton John concert in Phoenix on Friday night when The Associated Press called the race, campaign spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer said. Maricopa County reported a large batch of results that increased Kelly’s lead and made clear Masters could not make up the difference with the remaining ballots.

“It’s been one of the great honors of my life to serve as Arizona’s Senator,” Kelly said in a statement. “I’m humbled by the trust our state has placed in me to continue this work.”

Kelly’s victory in a 2020 special election spurred by the death of Republican Sen. John McCain gave Democrats both of Arizona’s Senate seats for the first time in 70 years. The shift was propelled by the state’s fast-changing demographics and the unpopularity of Trump.

Kelly’s 2022 campaign largely focused on his support for abortion rights, protecting Social Security, lowering drug prices and ensuring a stable water supply in the midst of a drought, which has curtailed Arizona’s cut of Colorado River water.

With President Joe Biden struggling with low approval ratings, Kelly distanced himself from the president, particularly on border security, and played down his Democratic affiliation amid angst about the state of the economy.

He also styled himself as an independent willing to buck his party, in the style of McCain.

Masters, an acolyte of billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, tried to penetrate Kelly’s independent image, aligning him with Biden’s failure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and tamp down on rampant inflation.

Masters endeared himself to many GOP primary voters with his penchant for provocation and contrarian thinking. He called for privatizing Social Security, took a hard-line stance against abortion and promoted a racist theory popular with white nationalists that Democrats are seeking to use immigration to replace white people in America.

But after emerging bruised from a contentious primary, Masters struggled to raise money and was put on the defense over his controversial positions.

He earned Trump’s endorsement after claiming “Trump won in 2020,” but under pressure during a debate last month, he acknowledged he hasn’t seen evidence the election was rigged. He later doubled down on the false claim that Trump won.

After the primary, he scrubbed some of his more controversial positions from his website, but it wasn’t enough for the moderate swing voters who decided the election.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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Entertainment

Twitter, Instagram block Kanye West over antisemitic posts

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NEW YORK (AP) — Kanye West once suggested slavery was a choice. He called the COVID-19 vaccine “the mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, he was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

Now the rapper who is legally known as Ye is again embroiled in controversy — locked out of Twitter and Instagram over antisemetic posts that the social networks said Sunday violated their policies. In one post on Twitter, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records, making an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

“You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” he said in the same tweet posted late Saturday, which was removed by Twitter.

The comment drew a sharp rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, which called the tweet “deeply troubling, dangerous, and antisemitic, period.”

“There is no excuse for his propagating of white supremacist slogans and classic antisemitism about Jewish power, especially with the platform he has,” a statement said.

Representatives for Ye did not return requests for comment.

Ye has alienated even ardent fans in recent years, teasing and long tinkering with albums that haven’t been met with the critical or commercial success of his earlier recordings. Those close to him, like ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, have ceased publicly defending him after the couple’s bitter divorce and his unsettling posts about her recent relationship with comedian Pete Davidson.

But the social media lockouts cap a whirlwind week for Ye, even by his standards. On Oct. 3 he wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt while debuting his latest fashion line in Paris, prompting harsh criticism. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, White Lives Matter is a neo-Nazi group.

Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs posted a video on Instagram saying he didn’t support the shirt, and urged people not to buy it. On Instagram, Ye posted a screenshot of a text conversation with Diddy and suggested he was controlled by Jewish people, according to media reports.

Adidas said Thursday that it was placing its lucrative sneaker deal with Ye under review. And on Saturday, Instagram locked out posts by the rapper-entrepreneur over content violations. His Twitter account was locked Sunday, just a day after he returned to the platform following a nearly two-year hiatus and was welcomed back by Elon Musk.

“Welcome back to Twitter, my friend,” posted Musk, who last week renewed his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter following a monthslong legal battle with the company. The billionaire and Tesla CEO has said he would remake Twitter into a free speech haven and relax restrictions, although it’s impossible to know precisely how he would run the influential network if he were to take over.

The social media policies for Twitter and Instagram prohibit posting offensive language.

Ye’s Twitter account is still active but he can’t post until the lockout ends. Sanctions by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, may include temporary restrictions on posting, commenting or sending direct messages. Such muzzles can last as little as 12 hours or for days, depending on how serious the violation was or how many other times the account broke the rules.

While a step below a full account suspension, enough of these restrictions can eventually lead to a person being kicked off of the social media platforms — temporarily or, in rare circumstances, permanently.

As of Monday afternoon, neither account had posted anything, indicating that Ye is still restricted. Neither Twitter nor Meta would say how long they will restrict Ye’s accounts — or how close he might be to becoming suspended or even permanently booted.

Ye has earned a reputation less for his music and more for stirring up controversy since 2016, when he was hospitalized in Los Angeles because of what his team called stress and exhaustion. It was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

That year, he ended a show in Sacramento, California, after just four songs but not before a 10-minute tirade about Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, the radio and MTV. West soon decided to scrap the entire tour.

Since then he has regularly made headlines: Running for president, continuing his running feud with Taylor Swift, causing an uproar when he suggested slavery was a choice, publicly defending R. Kelly and once inviting Marilyn Manson and DaBaby on stage with him as they faced sexual assault and anti-gay allegations, respectively.

Ye’s involvement aside, social media restrictions like this incident have been largely routine for the platforms. Twitter took action on nearly 4.3 million accounts between July and December of 2021, the latest available data from a transparency report it publishes twice a year. About 1.3 million accounts were suspended in the same period.

But with Twitter on the likely brink of being sold to Musk, advocacy groups fear the platform will revert back to the days when it was known as a cesspool of abuse and hate, especially for women, minorities and members of the LGBTQ community. While there is still hateful content on Twitter, the company has spent years trying to detect and remove threats, abuse, racism, violence and other harmful material.



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US

Ahmaud Arbery killers’ sentencing for federal hate crimes: Live updates

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BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The white father and son who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighborhood each received a second life prison sentence Monday — for committing federal hate crimes, months after getting their first for murder — at a hearing that brought a close to more than two years of criminal proceedings.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood handed down the sentences against Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Greg McMichael, 66, reiterating the gravity of the February 2020 killing that shattered their Brunswick community. William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, who recorded cellphone video of the slaying, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

“A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened, a jury found, happened because he’s Black,” Wood said.

The McMichaels were previously sentenced to life without parole in state court for Arbery’s murder and had asked the judge to divert them to a federal prison to serve their sentences, saying they were worried about their safety in the state prison system. Bryan had sought to serve his federal sentence first. Wood declined all three requests.

The sentences imposed Monday brought an end to the second trial against the men responsible for Arbery’s slaying, which along with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky fueled a wave of protests across the country against the killings of unarmed Black people.

“The Justice Department’s prosecution of this case and the court’s sentences today make clear that hate crimes have no place in our country, and that the Department will be unrelenting in our efforts to hold accountable those who perpetrate them,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release. “Protecting civil rights and combatting white supremacist violence was a founding purpose of the Justice Department, and one that we will continue to pursue with the urgency it demands.”

In February, a federal jury convicted the McMichaels and Bryan of violating Arbery’s civil rights, concluding they targeted him because of his race. All three were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels were convicted of using guns in the commission of a violent crime.

The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and used a pickup truck to chase Arbery after he ran past their home on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan, a neighbor, joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun. The McMichaels told police they suspected Arbery was a burglar, but investigators determined he was unarmed and had committed no crimes.

“I’m very thankful,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told reporters outside the courthouse after all three sentences had been imposed. “It’s been a long fight. I’m so thankful God gave us the strength to continue to fight.”

The hearings marked the first time the men involved in the deadly chase expressed any remorse to Arbery’s family. Only Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shots, chose to remain silent when given a chance to speak in court.

Greg McMichael told Arbery’s family their loss was “beyond description.”

“I’m sure my words mean very little to you, but I want to assure you I never wanted any of this to happen,” he said. “There was no malice in my heart or my son’s heart that day.”

Bryan said he was sorry.

“I never intended any harm to him, and I never would have played any role in what happened if I knew then what I know now,” Bryan said.

In giving Bryan a lower sentence, Wood noted he had not brought a gun to the pursuit of Arbery and preserved his cellphone video, which was crucial to the prosecutions.

Travis McMichael’s attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, said a lighter sentence would be more consistent with what similarly charged defendants have received in other cases, noting that the officer who killed Floyd in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, got 21 years in prison for violating Floyd’s civil rights, though he was not charged with targeting Floyd because of his race.

Greg McMichael’s attorney, A.J. Balbo, also cited the Chauvin sentence as well as his client’s age and health problems, which he said include a stroke and depression.

During the February hate crimes trial, prosecutors fortified their case that Arbery’s killing was motivated by racism by showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about Black people.

Prosecutor Christopher Perras said the trial evidence proved “what so many people felt in their hearts when they watched the video of Ahmaud’s tragic and unnecessary death: This would have never happened if he had been white.”

A state Superior Court judge imposed life sentences for the McMichaels and Bryan in January for Arbery’s murder, with both McMichaels denied any chance of parole. All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, in the custody of U.S. marshals, while awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions.

Because they were first charged and convicted of murder in a state court, they will be turned over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life terms in a state prison.

Copeland argued unsuccessfully for Travis McMichael to remain in federal custody, saying he has received hundreds of threats that he will be killed soon after arriving at state prison and that his photo has been circulated there on illegal phones.

“I am concerned your honor that my client effectively faces a back door death penalty,” she said, adding that “retribution and revenge” were not sentencing factors, even for a defendant who is “publicly reviled.”

Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., said Travis McMichael had shown his son no mercy and deserved to “rot” in state prison.

“You killed him because he was a Black man and you hate Black people,” he said. “You deserve no mercy.”

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Associated Press writer Sudhin Thanawala contributed to this report from Atlanta.

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House to vote on same-sex marriage, responding to high court

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House prepared to vote Tuesday on legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriages amid concerns that the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade abortion access could jeopardize other rights criticized by many conservative Americans.

With a robust but lopsided debate, Democrats argued intensely in favor of enshrining marriage equality in federal law, while Republicans steered clear of openly rejecting gay marriage. Instead, leading GOP lawmakers portrayed the bill as unnecessary amid other issues facing the nation.

Tuesday’s election-year roll call was partly political strategy, forcing all House members, Republicans and Democrats, to go on the record with their views. It also reflected the legislative branch pushing back against an aggressive court that has sparked fears it may revisit apparently settled U.S. laws.

“For me, this is personal,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., who said he was among nine openly gay members of the House.

“Imagine telling the next generation of Americans, my generation, we no longer have the right to marry,” he said. “Congress can’t allow that to happen.”

While the Respect for Marriage Act is expected to pass the House, with a Democratic majority, it is almost certain to stall in the evenly split Senate, where most Republicans would likely join a filibuster to block it. It’s one of several bills, including those enshrining abortion access, that Democrats are proposing to confront the court’s conservative majority. Another bill, guaranteeing access to contraceptive services, is set for a vote later this week.

Polling shows a majority of Americans favor preserving rights to marry whom one wishes, regardless of the person’s sex, gender, race or ethnicity, a long-building shift in modern mores toward inclusion.

A Gallup poll in June showed broad and increasing support for same-sex marriage, with 70% of U.S. adults saying they think such unions should be recognized by law as valid. The poll showed majority support among both Democrats (83%) and Republicans (55%).

Approval of interracial marriage in the U.S. hit a six-decade high at 94% in September, according to Gallup.

“The extremist right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has put our country down a perilous path,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., in a floor speech setting Tuesday’s process in motion.

“It’s time for our colleagues across the aisle to stand up and be counted. Will they vote to protect these fundamental freedoms? Or will they vote to let states take those freedoms away?”

But Republicans insisted Tuesday that the court was only focused on abortion access in June when it struck down the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling, and they argued that same-sex marriage and other rights were not threatened.

In fact, of all the Republicans who rose to speak during the morning debate, almost none directly broached the subject of same-sex or interracial marriage.

“We are here for a political charade, we are here for political messaging,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

As several Democrats spoke of inequalities they said that they or their loved ones had faced in same-sex marriages, the Republicans talked about rising gas prices, inflation and crime, including recent threats to justices in connection with the abortion ruling.

Even if it passes the House with Republican votes, as seems likely, the outcome in the Senate is uncertain.

“I’m probably not inclined to support it,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. “The predicate of this is just wrong. I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to overturn any of that stuff.”

For Republicans in Congress the Trump-era confirmation of conservative justices to the Supreme Court fulfilled a long-term GOP goal of revisiting many social, environmental and regulatory issues the party has been unable to tackle on its own by passing bills that could be signed into law.

But in a notable silence, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declined to express his view on the bill, leaving an open question over how strongly his party would fight it, if it even comes up for a vote in the upper chamber.

“I don’t see anything behind this right now other than, you know, election year politics,” said the GOP whip, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.

The Respect for Marriage Act would repeal a law from the Clinton era that defines marriage as a heterogeneous relationship between a man and a woman. It would also provide legal protections for interracial marriages by prohibiting any state from denying out-of-state marriage licenses and benefits on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity or national origin.

The 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act, had basically been sidelined by Obama-era court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the rights of same-sex couples to marry nationwide, a landmark case for gay rights.

But last month, writing for the majority in overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito argued for a more narrow interpretation of the rights guaranteed to Americans, noting that the right to an abortion was not spelled out in the Constitution.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas went further, saying other rulings similar to Roe, including those around same-sex marriage and the right for couples to use contraception, should be reconsidered.

While Alito insisted in the majority opinion that “this decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” others have taken notice.

“The MAGA radicals that are taking over the Republican Party have made it abundantly clear they are not satisfied with repealing Roe,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., referring to Trump’s backers.

He pointed to comments from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said over the weekend that the Supreme Court’s decision protecting marriage equality was “clearly wrong” and state legislatures should visit the issue.

But Schumer did not commit to holding a vote on the bill.

Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage and now running as a Democrat for the Ohio House, said after the court’s ruling on abortion, “When we lose one right that we have relied on and enjoyed, other rights are at risk.”

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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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Slave reparations advocates hail historic California report

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The slavery reparations movement hit a watershed moment Wednesday with the release of an exhaustive report detailing California’s role in perpetuating discrimination against African Americans, a major step toward educating the public and setting the stage for an official government apology and case for financial restitution.

The 500-page document lays out the harm suffered by descendants of enslaved people even today, long after slavery was abolished in the 19th century, through discriminatory laws and actions in all facets of life, from housing and education to employment and the legal system.

Longtime reparations advocate Justin Hansford, who is a law professor at Howard University and director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center in Washington called the moment exciting and monumental.

“To have an official detail of these histories coming from the state is important,” he said. “I know a lot of people say we don’t need to keep doing studies, but the reality is until it comes from some source that people think is objective, then it is going to be harder to convince everybody of some of the inequalities described.”

The report comes at a time when school boards and states across the U.S. are banning books or restricting what can be taught in classrooms, with parents and lawmakers largely opposed to topics of sexuality, gender identity or race. State lawmakers have tried to bar schools from teaching the “1619 Project,” a New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning report that reframes American history with enslaved people at its heart.

California is headed in the opposite direction, said Adam Laats, a historian at Binghamton University who called the document remarkable in its unflinching account, including detailing how police officers and district attorneys in the Los Angeles of a century ago were members of or had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

“Who children should learn are the main actors in the story of us as a nation has always been a real lightning rod,” he said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating the two-year task force in 2020, making California the only state to move ahead with a study and plan. Cities and universities have taken up the cause, with the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, becoming the first city to make reparations available to Black residents last year.

On Wednesday, Newsom issued a statement praising California for leading the country on a long overdue discussion of racial justice and equity. The state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office is assisting the task force, said, “California was not a passive actor in perpetuating these harms.”

A similar effort is underway to delve into what Newsom has called California’s dark history of violence, mistreatment and neglect of Native Americans. The report by the Truth and Healing Council, due in 2025, could include recommendations for reparations. Many tribes across the country have sought to acquire their ancestral land and co-manage public land.

The African American reparations task force, which began meeting in June 2021, will release a comprehensive reparations plan next year. The committee voted in March to limit reparations to the descendants of African Americans living in the U.S. in the 19th century, overruling advocates who wanted to expand compensation to all Black people in the U.S.

“Four hundred years of discrimination has resulted in an enormous and persistent wealth gap between Black and white Americans,” said the report by the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.

“These effects of slavery continue to be embedded in American society today and have never been sufficiently remedied. The governments of the United States and the State of California have never apologized to or compensated African Americans for these harms.”

California is home to the fifth-largest Black population in the U.S., after Texas, Florida, Georgia and New York, the report said. An estimated 2.8 million Black people live in California, although it is unclear how many are eligible for direct compensation.

African Americans make up less than 6% of California’s population yet they are overrepresented in jails, youth detention centers and prisons. About 28% of people imprisoned in California are Black and in 2019, 36% of minors ordered into state juvenile detention facilities were African Americans, according to the report.

Black Californians earn less and and are more likely to be poor than white residents. In 2018, Black residents earned on average just under $54,000 compared to $87,000 for white Californians.

“We don’t own homes and if you look at why there’s such a huge disparity between African Americans and white Americans and our ability to hold onto and sustain wealth, it’s because we don’t own homes,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a task force member.

The task force’s sweeping initial recommendations include prison system reforms. Inmates should not be forced to work and if they do, they must be paid fair market wages. Inmates should also be allowed to vote and people with felony convictions should serve on juries.

The group recommends creating a state-subsidized mortgage program to guarantee low rates for qualifying African American applicants, free health care, free tuition to California colleges and universities and scholarships to African American high school graduates to cover four years of undergraduate education.

The committee also calls for a Cabinet-level secretary position to oversee an African American Affairs agency with branches for civic engagement, education, social services, cultural affairs and legal affairs. It would help people research and document their lineage to a 19th-century ancestor so they could qualify for financial restitution.

People opposed to paying reparations argue that California did not have plantations or Jim Crow era laws as in the South.

But the interim report spells out how California, despite being “free,” perpetuated harms that have compounded over generations.

It noted that Missouri native Basil Campbell was purchased for $1,200 and forced to move to California’s Yolo County in 1854, leaving behind his wife and two sons. Campbell eventually paid off his purchase price, married and became a landowner. But when his sons petitioned for a portion of his estate after his death, a California judge ruled that marriage between two enslaved people “is not a marriage relation.”

More recently, it said, the home of Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin was assessed at a much lower price because it was located in a primarily Black part of upscale Marin County, where African Americans were forced to live starting in World War II.

The report should offer other cities and states — and ultimately the federal government — a blueprint for seeking reparations, members said. Over the next year, the task force will take on the difficult task of crafting an apology and creating a reparations plan to compensate for and stop the harm.

“The big question is: What are they going to do with it? The danger here is that everyone reads it and nods their heads and waits on the task force to initiate the response,” said Hansford, the law professor. “We need to have universities, local governments, businesses and others working together to do their part to address … the recommendations offered in the report.”

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AP writers Cheyanne Mumphrey in Phoenix, Arizona, and Felicia Fonseca in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.

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How Biden, cops and advocates forged deal on police and race

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Jim Pasco, the executive director for the Fraternal Order of Police, was watching football on a Sunday afternoon when he got a call from Susan Rice, the top domestic policy adviser at the White House.

Negotiations over an executive order to address racism and policing were in danger of breaking down after a draft was leaked that law enforcement groups believed was too harsh toward officers. Now Rice was looking to get things back on track.

“She said they wanted to start over,” Pasco said as he looked back on that day earlier this year. “And they wanted to deal with us in total confidence.”

He agreed. The result was the executive order that President Joe Biden signed last week during a ceremony that, improbably, brought together law enforcement leaders, civil rights activists and families of people who had been killed by police.

“This is a moment where we have come together for something that is not perfect, but it’s very good,” Rice said. “And it moves the needle substantially.”

No one who believes that American policing needs to be overhauled — including the president himself — thinks the final order goes far enough. It does not directly affect local departments, which have the most interactions with citizens, nor does it necessarily represent permanent change. The next administration could swiftly undo it.

However, many civil rights advocates consider it an important step forward, and maybe even a building block toward more expansive legislation that has so far been elusive.

“We have to keep the dialogue going,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “And I think this helps create the sense that we can talk, and if we do talk, we’ll find some common ground.”

A NEW STRATEGY

Biden’s original hope was for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation named for George Floyd, the Black man who was murdered by Minneapolis police during an arrest in 2020.

However, the first anniversary of Floyd’s death passed last year without a deal, and negotiations eventually broke down. White House officials began focusing on a potential executive order.

Previous presidents, too, have attempted to make improvements to America’s law enforcement system, but Biden faced particular pressure to find the right balance.

During his campaign, Biden met with Floyd’s family and pledged to make racial justice a core part of his administration.

He also had longstanding relationships with police and their unions. And he didn’t want to be at odds with law enforcement when crime was a growing concern for the country, not to mention an issue ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

After preliminary meetings, a draft of the order took shape, and it was circulated among various federal agencies. Then a leaked copy was posted online by the Federalist, a conservative website, in January.

“Everyone went ballistic,” Pasco said. Not only did law enforcement groups dislike various parts of the draft, they felt like the administration hadn’t adequately listened to their perspective.

Rice worked the phones to calm nerves, opening a new chapter in the negotiations.

In addition to Rice’s team, Justice Department officials and the White House counsel’s office under Dana Remus worked through the details. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., were involved as well.

Senior administration officials described a sort of shuttle diplomacy, and they met separately with civil rights advocates and law enforcement groups while trying to keep everyone on the same page. Long days were fueled by Hershey’s Kisses, M&Ms and whatever else that could be scrounged from White House desks.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, an independent policy organization, said that in Washington, “people give you lip service.” But in this case, “we had hours of discussions, very substantive discussions, about some of the issues in there.”

REACHING A DEAL

One sensitive part of the leaked draft didn’t change. The final version still says the country should “acknowledge the legacy of systemic racism in our criminal justice system and work together to eliminate the racial disparities that endure to this day.”

Ebonie Riley, a senior vice president at the National Action Network, a civil rights organization led by Rev. Al Sharpton, said it was important to leave that in.

“If we continue to hide in the shadows conversations that we need to have out loud, that becomes part of the problem,” she said.

To balance the tone, more language was added about “rising rates of violent crime” and how “reinforcing the partnership between law enforcement and communities is imperative for combating crime and achieving lasting public safety.”

A phrase about how deadly force should only be used as “a last resort when there is no reasonable alternative” was cut. However, the executive order requires federal law enforcement officers to prioritize de-escalation and then intervention if they see another officer using excessive force.

A significant portion of the order is dedicated to collecting information, such as creating a database to track misconduct by federal officers and expanding tools for analyzing the use of force.

“When we talk about what a fair criminal justice system looks like, a big part of that is understanding what the data is,” said Danielle Conley, the White House deputy counsel.

As an executive order, the new policies are limited to federal agencies. But administration officials plan to attach strings to federal funding to persuade local police departments to adopt similar rules.

“Simply having these words on paper is not going to save lives,” said Udi Ofer, deputy national political director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

On May 15, Biden attended an annual memorial for officers killed in the line of duty. After Biden posed for photos with people at the memorial, Pasco stuck around for a private conversation.

There wasn’t much time left until the second anniversary of Floyd’s death, May 25, and no one at the White House wanted the day to pass without an agreement.

“We gave everything we had to give,” Pasco recalled telling Biden. “And your staff made a lot of concessions, too. So as long as it remains the way it is, we’re good with it.”

Pasco said Biden responded, “I’m going to take a look at it, and if I see any problems, I’ll let you know about it.”

But there weren’t any, and the deal was done.

THE CEREMONY

Officials began inviting key players to the signing ceremony just a few days before, and some were only notified the previous day. A process that had nearly been unraveled by a leak reached the finish line without disruption.

In addition to Floyd’s family, the audience included relatives of other Black people — Michael Brown, Elijah McClain, Amir Locke, Atatiana Jefferson and Breonna Taylor — who had been killed by law enforcement over the years.

Not everyone was mollified. The Movement for Black Lives issued a statement calling Biden’s executive order “a poor excuse for the transformation of public safety that he promised.” But Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, argued that the order represented progress.

“If we refuse to sit at the table, or allow for the political climate to overshadow public policy opportunities, we all suffer as a result,” he said.

In his speech, Biden said Congress still needed to pass legislation, but he described the executive order as “the most significant police reform in decades.”

“Let me say there are those who seek to drive a wedge between law enforcement and the people they serve, those who peddle the fiction that public trust and public safety are in opposition to one another,” Biden said.

He added, “We know that’s not true.”

When Biden finished, Floyd’s 8-year-old daughter, Gianna, approached. “You’re getting so big,” Biden told her.

She sat down at the desk where the president had signed the order. Vice President Kamala Harris handed her the pen that Biden had used.

“You know what she told me when I saw her when she was a little girl two years ago?” Biden said. “Seriously, she pulled me aside and she said, ‘My daddy is going to change the world.’”

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