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In Ferguson, Missouri, Mike Browns body lay lifeless on the street for four hours after he was shot dead by a white officer. Witnesses described him holding his hands up in surrender before he was killed.

In New York City, Eric Garner told a white officer who placed him in a banned chokehold that he could not breathe before he died. He repeated the phrase 11 times.

In Cleveland, Ohio, 12-year-old Tamir Rice played on a snowy winter morning with a toy gun before he was shot dead by a white officer.

That these horrific deaths of unarmed black men and boys all occurred within four months of each other back in 2014 is no aberration. It is a cycle of American state brutality that has repeated itself year upon year, generation upon generation.

In 2015 it would be Tony Robinson, then Eric Harris, then Walter Scott, then Freddie Gray, then William Chapman, then Samuel DuBose. That some of those names have perhaps already faded from national memory is indicative of the crisis.

In 2016, I sat with Samaria Rice, mother of young Tamir, at a park bench near the site of her sons death as she lamented: When I see any of these murders its like the government is throwing more salt on an open wound and Im not having a chance to heal.

Then, she was referring to Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both shot dead by police within a day of each other earlier that month.

Now, in 2020, it is George Floyd, the 46-year-old loving father and staunch community advocate, placed in a knee-to-neck restraint for almost nine minutes by a white officer in Minneapolis. He died in the same metro area as Philando Castile. He uttered the same final pleas as Eric Garner.

The nationwide unrest that follows Floyds death is undoubtedly more intense than in 2014; the leadership from the White House immeasurably more reckless, insensitive and life threatening.

And yet, here the country is again.

Trumps response was a marked departure from the Obama administrations

Violence against black men and women at the hands of white authority is foundational to the United States, and continues to influence its policing culture to this day.

Precursors to modern-day American police departments include violent slave patrols utilized in southern states before the civil war, then the legal enforcement of racist Black Codes, followed by Jim Crow laws. Early municipal departments in growing US cities were overwhelmingly white, and brutalized vulnerable communities routinely. Thousands of lynchings of black Americans by white vigilantes went unpunished by the judicial system. And during the civil rights era and well beyond, peaceful protest has been harshly suppressed by officers sworn to protect and serve.

Just days after I sat with Samaria Rice on that bench in Cleveland, Donald Trump accepted the Republican partys nomination for president a few miles down the road.

Trump presented himself as the law and order candidate during a dark acceptance speech. The former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke led the arena in a chilling round of applause for the Baltimore police officer Brian Rice, who that day had been acquitted on charges related to the death of Freddie Gray, whose spine was almost severed during his 2014 arrest. Trump thrust the issue of race and policing firmly into the culture wars he was fomenting.

Trumps response to police violence was a marked departure from the Obama administrations. Since Michael Browns death, which began a nationwide reckoning and rejuvenated the Black Lives Matter movement, Obama had used his authority to target problematic police departments, including those in Ferguson, Chicago and Baltimore, with justice department investigations.

He issued an executive order to curtail local departments procurement of certain military-grade equipment. He commissioned a taskforce on 21st-century policing, which memorably urged American law enforcement to move from a warrior to a guardian culture.

Although America has a sprawling, decentralized system of policing the country has roughly 18,000 police departments each with their own use of force policy, hiring practices and oversight mechanisms making universal reform near impossible there were at least signs of tentative progress.

And then Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States.

Trump's chaotic presidency diverted attention from the debate around police killings

Not only did he fight a PR war against those who knelt during the national anthem to pay tribute to black lives lost and stand against the structural racism underpinning it all. Now a man who called for the death penalty against five black and brown teenagers wrongfully convicted of a rape in Central Park in 1989, had the ability, with a stroke of a pen or a nod to his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to undo any of the progress made.

The administration acted quickly. Within two months of assuming office, Sessions forced a sweeping review of court-enforceable reform packages known as consent decrees imposed on numerous problematic police departments. He revoked a directive, issued by the Obama administration, to end the US governments use of private prisons a marker of the first black presidents attempt to end the disproportionate incarceration of black and brown men.

Eight months in and Trump freed up local police to once again procure military-grade equipment, and Sessions had effectively cancelled the US governments flagship community police program.

But beyond the culture wars and quiet policy rollbacks, the most insidious effect of the Trump presidency on the battle for equal justice and fair policing was its partial suffocation of the story itself. Young men continued to die, but in the mania of the Russia inquiry, impeachment and the scandals upon scandal,the movement for black lives received less and less media oxygen.

In 2018, 21-year-0ld EJ Bradford was shot three times from behind by an officer in Hoover, Alabama. The incident barely made the news.

In 2019 Willie McCoy, a 20-year-old rapper, was shot at 55 times by officers in Vallejo, California, as he lay sleeping in his car. His death failed to capture prolonged attention.

In 2020 bloody rioting across Mississippis prison system led to more than a dozen deaths. Trump said nothing.

Last year, after a five-year struggle for justice for her son Eric Garner, I sat with Gwen Carr outside NYPD headquarters as she suffered the indignities of an administrative trial that ultimately led to the officer who suffocated her son losing his job the highest punishment he faced.

There is no justice at all for Eric, she said, sitting in the shade during a scorching New York summer day. They murdered him and if there was going to be justice, it would have been at the point when he said, I cant breathe.

'We need to dismantle the whole system and really rebuild it again'

A few weeks later, after years of investigation, the US justice department, now helmed by William Barr, announced that the federal government would not criminally prosecute the officer involved in Garners death. The decision was reportedly made by Barr personally. Trump said nothing.

It is local and state leadership that has shaped any positive steps on police reform in recent years.

The Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, intervened in the George Floyd case to elevate former officer Derek Chauvins murder charge. In recent years many departments have enforced restrictions on chokeholds and neck restraints.

Earlier this week, Ferguson, which is 70% African American, elected its first black mayor, Ella Jones. Its just my time to do right by the people, she said.

But for many, incremental change is not enough. The words Samaria Rice said in 2016 have resonated with me throughout this period of unrest.

We need to dismantle the whole system and really rebuild it again.

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US police have a history of violence against black people. Will it ever stop? - The Guardian

Professor Donald Kagan (left) and Professor Thomas Sowell(Jay Nordlinger / YouTube screengrab via The Rubin Report)

The term neoconservative is in bad odor on the right at present, but it was not always so, and I hope, one day, it will not be so again. (The neocons have always been in bad odor on the left.) They were great, the neoconservatives: intelligent and brave. Many of us learned a lot from them, and were inspired by their example.

Today, I am thinking of Allan Bloom, Walter Berns, Allan Sindler, Thomas Sowell, Donald Kagan... Why? Well, all of those men were at Cornell in 1969, when violent student protest erupted. And they watched the administration capitulate to it. This experience marked them, and they all left Cornell over it. (All except Sowell, who had already decided to leave.)

Bloom, by the way, went on to write for WFB and National Review. Indeed, his now-classic Closing of the American Mind began as an essay for NR.

Why am I thinking about all this? Because of what is going on at the New York Times, and other institutions as well. Armed violence? No. But consider this Twitter thread from Bari Weiss, a Timeswoman. She begins,

The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes and the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.

She continues,

The Old Guard lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption.

Another one:

The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it safetyism, in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.

One more:

Ive been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them.

The New York Times is a great newspaper, despite what you may hear from some of us. WFB once said that to go without it would be like going without arms and legs. (That was a preface to a criticism.) There is chaff along with the wheat, dross along with the gold. You have to pick and choose.

Would anyone fall over dead to hear that the same is true of some conservative publications?

A funny memory: About 15 years ago, Rob Long said something about my Impromptus column, and I said, Im afraid its basically Jay Nordlinger reads the New York Times and reacts to which Rob said, And whats wrong with that?

Today, as always, the Times has great and seasoned political reporters, foreign correspondents, columnists, editors, obit writers, critics... What must they think of the wokistas, who are evidently intent on turning the Times into, say, the Bennington student paper? Will they sit around and let it happen? Is Times management like the Cornell administration?

Im singling out the Times the topic du jour but, as Bari says, the civil war is raging inside other publications and companies across the country.

Let me close my little post with the obituary of Walter Berns that the Times published in January 2015 an obit written by the superb Sam Roberts:

After the Cornell protest, one demonstrator, Thomas Jones, sent Professor Berns an apology, but he never responded...

Mr. Jones acknowledged the other day, though, that years later, after he became the president of TIAA-CREF, a financial services company and provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields, he received a sardonic congratulatory note from his former professor.

First you wanted to kill me, the note from Professor Berns said. Now you want to take care of me in my retirement.

P.S. In 2004, I wrote a piece called Going Timesless: Who dares give up the newspaper of record? Robert Bork told me he had given up everything but the obit section. That, he did not want to live without. (I understand.)

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'Civil War' at the New York Times Today, and Memories of Cornell University in 1969 - National Review

President Trump needs every vote he got from white evangelicals in 2016 and then some. Hoisting a Bible in the air may not be enough.

Unnerved by his slipping poll numbers and his failure to take command of the moral and public health crises straining the country, religious conservatives have expressed concern in recent weeks to the White House and the Trump campaign about the presidents political standing.

Their rising discomfort spilled out into the open this week when the founder of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, scolded the president for taking such a belligerent tone as the country erupted in sorrow and anger over the police killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis.

Speaking on his newscast, The 700 Club, the televangelist whose relationship with Mr. Trump dates to the 1990s said, You just dont do that, Mr. President, and added, Were one race. And we need to love each other.

Three and a half years into the Trump presidency, Mr. Trumps Christian conservative allies practically have a pre-written script when the time comes to defend another jaw-dropping indiscretion bragging he was so irresistible to women that he could grab em by their genitals; paying off a pornographic film star and a Playboy Playmate to conceal his extramarital affairs; insisting he has never asked God for forgiveness; cursing at the National Prayer Breakfast.

And for the most part, this week was not much different as Mr. Trumps defenders on the religious right claimed they had no problem with an elaborate photo stunt in which the president had a park near the White House cleared of hundreds of peaceful protesters so he could walk across the street to a church that had been set on fire the night before and display a Bible in front of the cameras.

Offended? Not at all, declared Franklin Graham, a prominent evangelical leader and the son of Rev. Billy Graham who was known as the pastor to the presidents. Writing on Facebook, Mr. Graham expressed the indignation that was common among many of the presidents supporters in religious conservative circles. This made an important statement that what took place the night before in the burning, looting and vandalism, he said, had to end.

But numerous polls have shown that like most other Americans, religious Americans increasingly disapprove of how the president is doing his job a shift that would imperil Mr. Trumps re-election if he is not able to reverse it.

The high marks that white evangelicals and white Catholics were giving the president earlier this year have slipped lately as the rallying effect that boosted him at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis has faded.

Any slide with these voters the cornerstone of his political base is problematic. And even if voters of faith do turn out for him again in large numbers, analysts said, there may not be enough of them to help lift him to victory.

Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, noted that since 2016, the share of the American population that is white and evangelical has declined by two percentage points, to 15 percent.

In March, nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals said they approved of the job Mr. Trump was doing, PRRI found. But by the end of May, with the country convulsed by racial discord, Mr. Trumps favorability among white evangelicals had fallen 15 percentage points to 62 percent, according to a PRRI poll released Thursday. That is consistent with declines that other surveys have picked up recently. Among white Catholics, the same poll also found that his approval has fallen by 27 points since March.

He had an opportunity in March when people were looking to him. And then within four weeks he squandered it, Mr. Jones said.

Even if those numbers slip more between now and Election Day, it does not necessarily spell doom for the president. In the fall of 2016, his approval rating with white evangelicals was only 61 percent. He went on to win 81 percent of them in November.

As people whose cultural and political priorities have been extremely well served by the Trump administration, many religious conservatives long ago resigned themselves to his flaws as a president, a husband and a professed Christian. Some have come to see him as something of a divine instrument, sent by God to advance their cause.

But with the sacred often comes the profane, which is the most awkward part of the bargain Mr. Trump struck with the religious right to cement his rise to power in the Republican Party.

As strange as his appeal with the faithful might seem, it is not an entirely new phenomenon. Before he entered politics, he would often receive fan mail containing Bibles and Christian books, which he kept in a room in Trump Tower that he liked to show off to visitors. He and Mr. Robertson of The 700 Club became friendly when Mr. Trump had a large casino business in Atlantic City and hosted a boxing match featuring Evander Holyfield, who brought along Mr. Robertson as his personal pastor.

At times, including this week, it can seem as if the determination of many on the religious right to defend the president rises with inverse proportion to how most of the rest of the nation feels.

Some of President Trumps critics seem more upset about him holding a Bible at a church than they were about the vandals who nearly burned it to the ground, Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said in a statement. (In fact, the fire was contained to a small part of the church basement.)

In an interview, Mr. Reed took issue with the criticism from some on the right like Mr. Robertson, who was Mr. Reeds longtime mentor during their time together at the Christian Coalition. You cant look at the statements the president has made, the tweets he has sent out, and say that he has not expressed empathy for and revulsion at the circumstances surrounding the death of George Floyd, Mr. Reed said.

Groups like Mr. Reeds plan to spend tens of millions of dollars trying to identify and register new religious conservative voters while hammering a message about what they see at stake in November.

Turning their back on Mr. Trump now would likely spell defeat for the president in November, which would mean the end of a streak of legal and policy victories that conservatives have not experienced since the Reagan administration. The Supreme Court, with two Trump-appointed justices, now has an advantage that favors the right 5-4. And the presidents allies would like to see that grow in a second term so they might be able to finally realize longstanding goals like overturning Roe v. Wade and dismantling more of the regulatory apparatus that subjects businesses to government oversight.

Victory in these battles seems within reach as long as Mr. Trump is in the White House.

Its 2020, and people see it as a civilizational election on both sides, said Frank Cannon, president of the socially conservative American Principles Project.

Lost among the backlash to Mr. Trumps photo op at St. Johns this week was the message that many religious conservatives took from it. Symbolically, it was more important than how he did it, Mr. Cannon said. The next day, the president and the first lady participated in another photo op that was heavy in religious symbolism, visiting a shrine to Pope John Paul II in Washington that is owned by the conservative Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus.

Some social conservatives had felt embattled as state and local governments closed down churches as the coronavirus spread. The raging debate over the last several weeks over whether they should be allowed to reopen has become the latest flash point in the countrys culture wars.

Despite efforts by Attorney General William P. Barr to offer legal support to churches fighting orders to remain closed, some religious conservatives felt the White House had not acted quickly enough to help and expressed their displeasure to senior administration officials, according to people aware of the conversations. Some have also raised questions with the presidents aides about whether his sinking poll numbers are a serious concern.

So when Mr. Trump marched across Lafayette Park to the scarred house of worship on Tuesday after members of the armed forces he commands swept out the demonstrators, many took that as a sign that the president was taking a defiant stand for conservative Christians.

I think that was a moment the president was expressing, in his own way, his support for the faith community, said Penny Nance, chief executive of Concerned Women for America. She said she wasnt at all offended by the removal of the protesters, which involved the heavy use of force and clouds of pepper spray.

Nor did it bother her that Mr. Trump did not pray he only raised the Bible above his head and displayed it for the cameras. He didnt come from our world, Ms. Nance said. Hes not Mike Pence.

But it did bother other Christian leaders, including the Episcopal bishop of Washington who oversees the church, St. Johns, who said she was outraged that Mr. Trump would use a religious gathering place as a political prop.

Noticeably absent during the presidents visit were two of the most visible religious conservatives serving in the Trump administration: Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, and Kellyanne Conway, a Catholic who has acted as the presidents bridge to the world of activist social conservative women.

The killing of Mr. Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has stirred up complex and often conflicting emotions among some of the presidents most stalwart supporters, who have expressed anguish over the officers conduct but have been less willing to acknowledge the pervasive racism that contributes to police brutality.

In 2018 when PRRI conducted a poll that asked about recent killings of black men by the police, 70 percent of white evangelicals said they were isolated incidents rather than reflective of a broader pattern.

The following year another PRRI poll asked white, evangelical Trump supporters if there was anything he could do to lose their support. Thirty-one percent of them said he could do almost anything and they still wouldnt turn their backs on him.

Giovanni Russonello and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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Trumps Approval Slips Where He Cant Afford to Lose It: Among Evangelicals - The New York Times

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On Friday, Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddits co-founders, said that hes stepping down from the sites board because it is the right thing. He wants the company to appoint a Black board member in his place.

It is long overdue Ohanian said. Im doing this for me, for my family, and for my country. Im writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: What did you do?

He also committed to giving $1 million to Colin Kaepernicks Know Your Rights Camp as well as donating future gains in his Reddit stock to serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate.

Ohanians quest for absolution is vague. He doesnt specify the source of whatever guilt he is expiating here, nor any specific injustice that he contributed to that might explain what his departure is fixing. Were left to guess.

There at least a few things that have gone wrong in Ohanians time that he might be feeling bad about:

One of his biggest missteps was his failure to do anything as his platform became an incubator for some of the most toxic, extreme communities online. During Gamergate, Ohanian, et al.,more or less stood by as their platform became an organizing tool for vicious right-wing trolls who were aggressively harassing women in the gaming industry under the ridiculous guise of caring about ethics in gaming journalism.

Gamergate is often cited as a turning point in the internet culture wars, a moment when it became clear that the warped trolls werent just posting for the lulzthey were actually sexist and racist bigots who were eager to terrorize people. To this day, the almost-official GamerGate subreddit sits unbanned on Reddit, despite having been a hub for the movement.

Ohanian and Reddit were also slow to address other virulent communities of hate on the platform. The site and platform eventually did take action on some of the worst communities, banning subreddits like r/CringeAnarchy, which spread depressingly gross, incendiary content in the aftermath of the New Zealand Christchurch shooting.

He and the company also stood idly by as r/The_Donald, a subreddit featuring Trumps most toxic supporters online, grew into a massive community. Reddit eventually quarantined it, the platforms term for isolating problematic communities and making it harder to access them.

Ohanians move is especially bizarre in that he doesnt seem to have secured anything tangible from the Reddit board. There doesnt seem to be any guarantee that the company will do as he urges and hire a black candidate, nor is there any demand on his part that the Black hire be committed to any particular vision of racial justice. Black representation alone is not a guarantee of making meaningful strides to racial equity. At least he went out in the most Reddit way possiblewith a weird post that leaves you feeling faintly embarrassed for having read it.

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Reddit Executive Chairman Resigns From the Site's Board, Posts Cringe - Mother Jones

New York Times writer and opinion editor Bari Weiss offered insight about the internal battle among her colleagues following the publishing of an op-ed written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark that sparked a major backlash from its own staff.

Hours before the Times offered a mea culpa for running Cotton's piece that called for the troops to be sent in to quell the George Floyd riots, Weiss claimed that a "civil war" was brewing within the paper

"The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same," Weiss began a thread on Twitter. "The Old Guard lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption."

NY TIMES ISSUES 'MEA CULPA,' SAYS TOM COTTON OP-ED ON GEORGE FLOYD RIOTS 'RUSHED,' FAILED TO MEET STANDARDS

She continued, "The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it 'safetyism,'in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech."

Weiss pointed to the controversial 2018 decision made by The New Yorker to disinvite Steve Bannon from its Ideas Festivalas an "example" of the ideological battle among the left, stressing "there are dozens and dozens of examples."

NY TIMES REPORT ABOUT TESLA OWNERS DISTURBED BY ELON MUSK'S EMBRACE OF 'RED PILL' SPARKS MOCKERY ON TWITTER

"I've been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them," Weiss continued. "I'm in no way surprised by what has now exploded into public view. In a way, it's oddly comforting: I feel less alone and less crazy trying to explain the dynamic to people. What I am shocked by is the speed. I thought it would take a few years, not a few weeks."

The Times editor then pointed to the paper's motto "all the news that's fit to print," claiming that one group within outlet "emphasizes the word 'all,' while the other emphasizes "the word 'fit.'"

DEMS TRASH NY TIMES OVER FRONT-PAGE HEADLINE DEEMED TOO FAVORABLE TO TRUMP

"I agree with our critics that it's a dodge to say 'we want a totally open marketplace of ideas!'There are limits. Obviously. The question is: does his view fall outside those limits? Maybe the answer is yes," Weiss said. later alluding to a recent poll."If the answer is yes, it means that the view of more than half of Americans are unacceptable. And perhaps they are."

After Times editorial page editor James Bennet and Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger defended the op-ed, a spokeswoman released astunning statement Thursday evening claiming Cotton's piece never should have been published.

NY TIMES WRITERS IN 'OPEN REVOLT' AFTER PUBLICATION OF COTTON OP-ED, CLAIM BLACK STAFF 'IN DANGER'

"We've examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication. This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards," the statement read. "As a result, we're planning to examine both short term and long term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reduction the number of op-eds we publish."

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Critics blasted the mea culpa, many of them citing the op-eds written by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Erdogan, and even the leader of the Taliban that apparently met their standards in years past.

Cotton's communications director, Caroline Tabler, told Fox News, "We werent contacted by the New York Times in advance of this statement and our editorial process was similar to our past experiences at the New York Times and other publications. We're curious to know what part of that process and this piece didnt meet their standards."

Fox News' Sam Dorman contributed to this report.

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NY Times editor Bari Weiss says there's a 'civil war' within paper amid Tom Cotton uproar - Fox News