George Floyd’s family urges Biden to pass a policing reform bill – live

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Lois Beckett, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• George Floyd’s family encouraged Congress to pass a policing reform bill after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House. The family’s meeting with the president came on the one-year anniversary of the death of Floyd, who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis. “If you can make federal laws to protect the [national] bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color,” Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, told reporters after the meeting.
• Biden expressed hope that lawmakers will soon reach a bipartisan compromise on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. “To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths,” the president said in a statement after his meeting with Floyd’s family. “We have to act.”
• Biden will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month in Geneva, Switzerland, the White House confirmed. The 16 June summit will mark Biden’s first in-person meeting with the Russian president since taking office.
• As of today, 50% of American adults are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, the White House said. Biden has previously said he wants to get 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by 4 July, and the White House said it is on track to meet that goal.
• House minority leader Kevin McCarthy condemned extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for comparing coronavirus restrictions to the Holocaust. “Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” McCarthy said. Greene’s comments had sparked widespread outrage among members of both parties, who noted it was incredibly offensive to compare health precautions recommended by experts to the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people.

Lois will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

The senate voted Tuesday afternoon to confirm Kristen Clarke to lead the civil rights division at the Justice Department, making her the Black woman to be confirmed to the role.

The vote was 51-48, with Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, voting with Democrats to support Clarke’s nomination.

Clarke, a career civil rights lawyer who is widely respected for her work on voting rights, politicing, and anti-discrimination, will lead the division of the department responsible for enforcing some of America’s most powerful anti-discrimination laws.

At the department, she’ll join Vanita Gupta, another longtime civil rights lawyer, who was confirmed to be the associate attorney general, the number three position at the department, earlier this year. The appointment of both women, widely praised by civil rights groups, signals the importance of civil rights enforcement to the Biden administration.

As the head of the civil rights division, Clarke will be responsible for enforcing the nation’s voting laws. She will take over at a moment when Republicans across the country have launched a brazen effort to restrict access to the ballot. The Trump administration was largely silent on voting rights enforcement and many are closely watching to see whether the Justice Department will aggressively challenge the new laws.

Clarke’s confirmation is also a major political win for the Biden White House. Republicans and Fox News host Tucker Carlson spent months attacking Clarke for an op-ed she wrote in college and tried to paint her as someone who would come to the role with an anti-police bias.

Clarke and Democrats strongly pushed back on those accusations, saying the op-ed, written decades ago when she was an undergraduate, was distorted and that she did not support defunding the police.

Joe Biden has released a statement to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, urging Congress to pass the policing reform bill named in his honor.

The president noted he met with some of Floyd’s family members in the Oval Office this afternoon, and he applauded their strength over the past year.

“Although it has been one year since their beloved brother and father was murdered, for the family – for any family experiencing a profound loss – the first year can still feel like they got the news a few seconds ago,” Biden said. “And they’ve had to relive that pain and grief each and every time those horrific 9 minutes and 29 seconds have been replayed.”

Biden emphasized that the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin cannot be the end of the discussion when it comes to policing reform.

“Last month’s conviction of the police officer who murdered George was another important step forward toward justice. But our progress can’t stop there,” Biden said.

“To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between the vast majority of the men and women who wear the badge honorably and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. We can and must have both accountability and trust and in our justice system.”

The president expressed hope that lawmakers will soon reach a bipartisan compromise on the policing bill and send it to his desk.

“We have to act. We face an inflection point,” Biden said. “The battle for the soul of America has been a constant push and pull between the American ideal that we’re all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. At our best, the American ideal wins out. It must again.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ meeting with the family of George Floyd to commemorate the anniversary of his murder concluded after about an hour.

Once the meeting wrapped up, Floyd’s family members and their attorney, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, walked out to speak to White House reporters.

Crump said the meeting was “very personal” because Biden has gotten to know the Floyd family well over the past year, and the president offered his assurances that he was ready to sign the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act “any day”.

“He said that he doesn’t want to sign a bill that doesn’t have substance and meaning, so he is going to be patient to make sure it’s the right bill, not a rushed bill,” Crump said.

Philonise Floyd, one of Floyd’s brothers who participated in the meeting with the president, said it was absolutely imperative that Congress pass the bill.

“If you can make federal laws to protect the [national] bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color,” Floyd said.

Joe Biden will travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma, next week to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city’s race massacre, the White House has just announced.

The announcement comes a week after three survivors of the massacre testified before the House of Representatives about the need for reparations for those who survived the attack and their descendants.

The Guardian’s David Smith reported last week:

For nearly a century she was denied a voice by a culture of silence. Finally, at the age of 107, Viola Fletcher got a national stage on Wednesday to bear witness to America’s deep history of racial violence.

Fletcher is the oldest living survivor of a massacre that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 31 May and 1 June 1921 when a white mob attacked the city’s ‘Black Wall Street’, killing an estimated 300 African Americans while robbing and burning more than 1,200 businesses, homes and churches.

She was just seven years old at the time.

For decades the atrocity was actively covered up and wished away. But Fletcher and her 100-year-old brother are seeking reparations and, ahead of the massacre’s centenary, appeared before a House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee considering legal remedies. …

‘I am here seeking justice,’ Fletcher said. ‘I am here asking my country to acknowledge what happened in Tulsa in 1921.’

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now meeting with the family of George Floyd to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his murder in Minneapolis.

The White House told the press pool about 20 minutes ago that the meeting, scheduled to begin at 1:30 pm ET, had now started.

Biden’s staff has said he intends for the meeting to be a private gathering, but members of the Floyd family may speak to reporters after it concludes.

After their meeting with the president, Floyd’s family members are scheduled to meet with Democratic Senator Cory Booker and Republican Senator Tim Scott, who are working on the policing reform bill named in Floyd’s honor.

The blog will have more details on the meeting as they become available, so stay tuned.